On the occasion of the 50 years anniversary of her accession to the throne, HM The Queen was surprised by the closest family members with a secretly-arranged dinner in Christian VII’s Palace at Amalienborg on 14 January 2022. As a very special feature, the table was set with the Flora Danica service, which is the most precious Danish dinner service. The last time the service was used in the Royal House of Denmark was for Queen Ingrid’s 80th birthday in 1990.

The Flora Danica service was created at the end of the 1700s at the “The Royal Porcelain Factory” in Copenhagen and was decorated with images of plants from the Danish realm in full size, hand-painted from the book “Flora Danica” from 1761. It is said that the original service set was intended as a diplomatic gift from Christian VII to Empress Catherine II of Russia, but when the empress died in 1796 before the set was finished, the king kept it himself instead.

The service set consisted of 1,800 pieces, of which 1,500 pieces still exist and are exhibited at Rosenborg Castle and on the walls of the room named “The Rose” in Christian VII’s Palace. In 1862, production of the Flora Danica service was resumed, and today it is the only Royal Porcelain Factory dinner service produced in Denmark. There, 15 specially trained porcelain painters attend to painting the plants and the gilded edges, and an average of 13,000 brushstrokes are painted on each individual piece of the service.